A group of the world's leading financial institutions have joined forces to create Regulatory DataCorp, a for-profit company which will operate a database of public information to help identify and manage the risks associated with financial crime.
RDC - spearheaded by Goldman Sachs in association with Allianz, American Express, Bank of America, Bank of New York, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, GE Capital, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, New York City Investment Fund, Prudential Financial, UBS, Wachovia and Wells Fargo - has been in development over the past two years. During that time, the company has created a worldwide clearinghouse of publicly available information that conforms to international standards and regulations, as well as the tools necessary for institutions to conduct automated due diligence on entities, individuals and transactions.
William Catucci, who has been appointed chief executive officer of RDC, says: "RDC is a proactive industry response to serious threats posed to global security by money laundering, fraud, terrorist financing, organized crime and corruption. It combines proven technology and meaningful risk-relevant information from a variety of public sources."
Among the products developed by RDC is the Global Regulatory Information Database or Grid system. Grid combines historic and current public records published by regulatory agencies in over 50 countries with reporting from news organisations and other publicly available sources from around the world.
RDC is additionally developing a number of due diligence and anti-fraud products and services that address both consumer and corporate issues, such as identification verification and protection, electronic subpoena compliance, and charitable gift screening, among others.
The RDC database will be managed through Equifax's Compliance Data Center subsidiary. Other alliances are being formed with ChoicePoint, Thomson Financial Publishing, and LexisNexis.